1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to optical signal compensation systems and techniques and more specifically, to atmospheric turbulence and pointing jitter enhancement systems and techniques for aiming laser beams at retro-reflective means.
2. Description of Prior Art
Currently, there are several passive and active alternative approaches for jitter and atmospheric turbulence compensation. But these approaches all have major disadvantages which severely limit their usefulness. The simplest approach is to merely enlarge the transmitted laser beam divergence to "hit" the receiver. While a larger beam divergence mitigates the effects of transmitter pointing jitter and atmospheric turbulence induced beam wander, it unfortunately does not compensate for atmospheric turbulence scintillation and requires much more laser energy. Another passive approach is to use a stabilized pointing system to aid in hitting the receiver. This approach tends to be mechanically complicated, expensive, and only compensates for jitter with no turbulence compensation. Adaptive optic compensation is an active approach that compensates for jitter and atmospheric turbulence. This is a promising technology but current implementations are extremely complicated, bulky, fragile and expensive.
While the prior art has reported using passive and active approaches to optical signal compensation techniques none have established a basis for a specific apparatus that is dedicated to the task of resolving the particular problem at hand. What is needed in this instance is an atmospheric turbulence and pointing jitter compensation system and technique for aiming laser beams at retro-reflective means that is optically and electronically simple and compact.